Touch

By Tiffany Kagure Mugo

What comes to mind when you think about sex?

Touch explores sex as a vast, yet intertwined experience with oneself and between people. It draws on the experiences of sex from people across genders, sexualities – even borders. It delves into the ways in which sex features in our lives.

Sex can be fun, tricky, and heart-breaking, and this book covers all this and much more. Compiled by Tiffany Kagure Mugo and Kim Windvogel, the pieces are real, expressive, cathartic and dare we say it, sexy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kwela
• Release date: Jun 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9780795710094

Tiffany Kagure Mugo

Tiffany Kagure Mugo is co-founder and curator of HOLAA! a Pan-African hub that advocates for, and tackles issues surrounding African female sexuality. She is a TEDx speaker and a radio show host. She contributes to spaces speaking about sex and politics and is the author of Quirky Quick Guide to Having Great Sex (2020). She is based in Joburg.

Book preview

9780624089810_FC

Compiled by

Tiffany Kagure Mugo and Kim Windvogel

Kwela Books

A note on the content in this book

While there aren’t many specific references in these essays around safer sex practices, we highly support the practice of enthusiastic consent, of using internal and external condoms and various forms of protection, good lube, and all the other amazing things that make us feel safe and ready to play. For more information on safer sex practices check out the free How to Touch manual online, available from @thetouchexperience on Instagram.

Some of the essays contained in Touch contain graphic mentions of rape, drug use and assault, but not to worry, there are trigger warnings (TW) ahead of any piece that may require one.

Enter the lair, if you dare: The beginnings of Touch

Tiffany is in the bath, doing self-care shit and contemplating life.

Kim is having wine and reading through a book titled The Unbearables Big Book of Sex.

Kim’s phone lights up, it’s a message from Tiffany.

Tiff: Hey, bii … I was thinking we should work together again.

Kim: Funny you say that, I am literally reading this collection I bought in Philadelphia and thought of compiling another book because – narratives matter. LOL.

Takes a swig of wine and snaps pictures of the book to send to Tiff.

Tiff: I mean, you compiled They Called Me Queer and I just released Quirky Quick Guide to Having Great Sex … and hello? Did you just send me a picture of three dicks tied together and suspended mid-air?

Kim: Yes!!! It might help get our creative juices flowing.

Tiff: Now, getting people to write about sex that’s a hard one. And writing about sex within the pandemic … eisssshhh.

Kim: Yeah! No one is getting great sex. Folx just stressed fucking outchea. We are all isolating and who the fuck is feeling for a fuck during a pandemic?

Tiff: Imagine writing about busting a nut just to be depressed and all alone in real life? Also, Kwela will not publish three dicks suspended in mid-air, Kimmy-pops!

Kim: True ... but sex is much more than that. LOL, it’s not just about ‘busting a nut’. It’s about our insecurities, our desires, our bodies, our depression, our upbringing, religion ...

Tiff: … assigned sex at birth, marriage, polyamory, monogamy …

Kim: Yeah, the brief can literally just be: SEX. Now go make magic. We could always try for two dicks?

Tiff: Are we really doing this? LOL

Kim: Yes, we are doing this. We have good working chemistry …

Tiff: Actually yes! and between the two of us our networks have authors, artists, poets, sex positive thinkers and workers … so …

Kim: I think we should also move outside our usual suspects ... make sure this showcases different voices. TCMQ relied too heavily on certain parts of South Africa, let’s branch the fuck out.

Tiff: I can reach out to folks in other parts of Africa too, spread it outside of South Africa? Have that continental flava!

Kim: The wine might be getting to me, but reading ‘continental flava’ made me reach for my vibrator LOL.

Tiff: Damn …

Although the idea for this collection came from bath bombs, being isolated and too much wine, we took the plunge to curate this anthology because, you know what: we love sex, our work revolves around sex and we like to do things in collaboration with the communities represented in these pages. We did it because sex is tricky. It’s wild, it’s fun and sometimes it’s sticky. Sex can confuse us, please us and allow us to explore. It can cage us, drive us or be something to fear. There are the moving body parts, the uncertainties of whether to stroke or flick and the (un)fortunate inability to read your partner’s mind. But there are also the times when you are on your A-game and you feel like you can give your partner(s) a world of pleasure.

No matter your age or sexual orientation, sex is tough to talk about. Pleasure is rarely, if ever, a topic of conversation.Touch is a cornucopia of ideas, notions and feelings. We wanted this anthology to be a space for our contributors to write and create work that engages, expresses and unpacks the topic of sex, in all its complexities. What is sex when it sits in the mind, travels through the body, and escapes through our pleasure or remains stagnant in our pain? As we continued to chat about all the possibilities, we realised it wouldn’t be fair to box the contributors in. We needed to allow them to flourish outside of our narrow view of the word ‘sex’ during that first night of excited initial WhatsApp exchanges.

We wanted something that brought this vortex to the fore, something that explained their experiences of sex in their different voices from their different perspectives. Some wrote about their sexual experiences, their abortions, or even their challenges of being assigned a sex at birth that did not affirm their gender identities. Some wrote about heartbreak, depression, love, one night stands, crossing the world for the hope of love, and even virtual and lockdown sex. Some wrote about squirting, skirting past anal and orgasms. The pieces you will read in Touch are vast, real, expressive, sad, poetic, touched by trauma, touched by god, cathartic and, dare we say it, sexy.

Here is something that is sometimes dark, sometimes delicious, sometimes seductive and sometimes super chill, but always beautiful and intimately queer.

—Tiff & Kim

Mind Fuck

Sarah Franc

My fingers know their way around a keyboard.

I don’t stop to think.

We know exactly where I am going with this, and the lust I am whispering into you …

A moment’s pause, only to hear myself edge towards you.

I am on these pages now for your eternal consumption.

I would never pressure you to stare

Your eyes may eat and swallow ... at your own pace.

Whether you want to

look me over, tear at my form or dirty my lines.

My composure is being surrendered to you.

Do you like it?

I observe my own submission. With the tap of a key, the lightness of a finger, I’m touching myself … Full stop.

!

I can’t stop staring at you. My hands spelling out how I long for you to touch

I want to reach at you from behind this ink and surprise you with (I bite my lip)

the coolness of my tongue, that flicks firmly on your imagination.

Maybe there are many of you at once; maybe we are alone.

Maybe I am reading this to you, maybe you’ll wonder what else I’m thinking.

... Right now I’m open and I am yours,

I am completely focused on you

Let my text be your meaning. Allow my words to find your spot. Let my want fill you. And then do as I please.

Sarah Franc is a wild mystic trapped in the city by an evil global system. She rarely mentions her wondrous achievements.

I’ll take a dozen or more soul ties, with whipped cream on the side

Kim Windvogel

He said he wanted to make love. I said no. He said he was used to getting what he wants. I said that it’s not like I’m waiting for marriage. He asked me what I was waiting for, I said that I didn’t know. A few weeks later we were in bed, playing Spider Solitaire. I felt something building between us. I climbed onto his big stomach that stood like a proud mountain, kissed him deeply, tasted gin. Then I rolled off him, onto my back and proclaimed that I was ready. He smiled – annoyingly knowingly, opened his drawer, muttered something about condoms, grabbed his wallet and left the house whistling a happy tune. After he left, I realised what I had done, I panicked and put on one of his hoodies and proceeded to position myself on the bed in various ‘sexy’ positions in case he returned abruptly. By the time he came back, I was hiding in his closet – cue closet jokes. He said my name twice before I came out of the closet, smiling, acting like I was not hiding, that this was not scaring me, that this was just my way of teasing before we fucked. He put on Sunday love jams and kissed me, then led me to his bed. It did not hurt, nothing tore, no blood and no regret.

He was younger than me, and he hungered for me. He followed me around like a puppy and sought any excuse for us to touch, innocently. I had not had sex since my first lover left for America more than a year before. My heart had been deliriously devoted to him. We had a drink, he invited me back to his parents’ house. We drove in my car as he directed me to his house. He did not take me to his room, he did not offer me a drink, he awkwardly led me to his parents’ bedroom. He was clumsy. He came after three minutes, left me unsatisfied and there were pictures of his parents everywhere.

He was my friend. After the second man to ever fuck me (the one in the parents’ bedroom), my lust awoke from its deep sleep; I was ready to devour any friend, foe, or frenemy. We fucked on his friend’s sleeper couch after attending a party in Observatory. He came inside of me and we slept like an old married couple. I took the morning-after pill. We do not speak anymore because years later he did not know how to take ‘no’ for an answer from a stripper.

He was an artist, he worked at a skate shop. I met him at my friend’s 21st birthday party in the ’burbs. I wanted to fuck him. He invited me on a date, I do not remember where we went. It was cute, though. We parked on Boyes Drive. At first, I couldn’t feel him fill me up, so I turned around, pulled my pants down around my ankles and when he fucked me this time, he scraped my cervix. We collapsed on either side of the gearbox. He dropped me off and promised to call. He did.

He owned prime land in a part of the country my ancestral family is from, yet he always stressed about money. The first time I met him we were at my sister’s house. We spent the night flirting. At two in the morning, we were sitting in his car, he asked if he could put his arm around me. I nodded. He kissed me, I kissed him back, we stayed there for hours. When the sun came up, he said he wanted to see me again. He fetched me past midnight a week later and took me to a party in town. He was tall and he danced like a clumsy older white man who owned land. I found him adorable. We got in his car and went to one of his friends’ homes in a gentrified part of the city. Once inside we smoked a few joints and somewhere between enjoying the company and wanting to fuck, his eyes found mine – it was time to go. He took me to his home, where he lived in the attic. When we got to the room, it was overwhelmingly hot and when I looked up, I could see the stars through the skylight. I turned around, he bent down to kiss me. He stepped away and gently removed his navy pants. My mouth fell open, what was before me was the most beautifully shaped penis I had ever seen. I wanted to take him, I wanted to have him, taste him, it was beautiful. I took him in my mouth, and he sounded like he wanted to cry. We fucked under the skylight and fell asleep with our foreheads touching and our eyes melting together. The next morning, he made me a spinach and feta omelette fried in coconut oil and then we showered together where I held him in my mouth until he came on my tits.

He was a friend; he was visiting from the Free State. We were at a Halloween party. After everyone left, we watched National Geographic on the projector and as the dolphins squeaked away in the background, I took him in my mouth and listened to him make sounds like he was about to cry. After he ate me out, I raised my leather skirt, got on all fours, and commanded him to fuck me from the back. He did so and before he came, I told him to cum on my face. He pulled out and I sat on my knees with closed eyes, waiting for my anointing. We crept to the bathroom, cleaned ourselves off and cuddled into the morning. Two years later he would return to the city and we would live together, next to the ocean, next to the mountain and close to my parents.

He was a guy from the neighbourhood. He had the eyes of someone who could kill you and it turned me on. White boys who slam the wall when they are mad type-of-shit. We would fuck in his room, loudly, and then go downstairs to eat dinner and drink red wine with his parents. They liked quizzing me on my classical music knowledge; I told them I only studied classical music for voice training. This is what I told everybody yet I didn’t even know the real reason I was studying classical music any more. One night, he fucked me while I was sleeping. I did not know what to call it for a long time. We had fucked an hour before. I liked it then. So, what was different now?

I had never thought of myself as queer. But the first time I met her, I knew we were meant to be, clichéd as it may sound. One night, she kissed me in the car. Beast unleashed, I climbed onto her, transferring upon her two months of yearning for her touch. She slid her hand over me and gasped at my wetness. For you, just for you, I whispered. The first time she made me cum I saw my future, my present and my past. I saw love, I saw pleasure, I saw my clit wafting away on beams of transcending vibrations – alignment. I felt water escape my vulva, I saw water on her face, I did not know what had happened, but I could tell she liked it. She got onto her back and let me touch her. I was scared, I had never been with someone with a vagina before, what if I disappointed her? She took my hand and said, just do it. I dove in and tasted my future inside of her.

I met her at a dinner party. She was intelligent and confident. I was a baby queer, I still felt like I didn’t know how to do any of this. The first time was strange. I think I was still in love with the first woman who made me see the future, present and past when she made me cum. The second time we fucked in a friend’s lounge, the last time we fucked in my house after watching three seasons of The L Word together.

She was a cute lesbian with chubby rosy cheeks. She was busy moving out of her university residence and texted me to help her pack. I went over, we did not pack. As I was about to cum, she repeatedly said: cum for me, cum for me, cum Kim, cum. I could not handle the pressure. On the floor of her dorm room, I faked my first and last orgasm. I needed to leave.

He was a poet with long dreads and his voice was deep and smooth. We made love with words, tongue-twisters in bed, alliteration on paper, red flags flying everywhere, and I would step on them with my sandalled feet. I wanted him to be real, so I ignored the signs. He once fucked me so hard that my period came early. When I sat down to pee and looked at the paper it had the tint of a red rose, two days early. Then I remembered how he choked me when he filled me up and got wet all over again. He was a rampant romping red flag, and I was the soldier sticking his flags over every inch of my body for everybody to see.

After I moved out of the house next to the ocean, next to the mountain and close to my parents, I called a white boy who I had met at some political workshop. I wanted to fuck the privilege out of him. It was two in the morning, this would never be serious, but I wanted him. We drank until four and as I brushed my face against his chest, he asked me what this would be. I said it would be platonic, he kissed me. He tasted weird. But in a nice way. It was drunken, awkward, slightly sloppy. We went to his bed, he tasted clean, like he had washed his dick with Lifebuoy when I told him I would be coming over. It was nice, it was funny. He straddled me and placed his penis on my vulva to feel my wetness. I looked into his eyes, his glasses had shifted, he looked like a defeated Harry Potter. I chuckled out loud at the thought. He asked me why I was laughing, he went flaccid. I turned around, lifted my ass and felt him harden again, then he fucked me for a few minutes. I do not remember how that night ended.

She was a closeted queer. I liked her. I did not want to pursue her. She was the one who proclaimed to be ‘straight.’ She had to let me know that she wanted me. She did. One night, after we drank a few drinks at a local bar and said hi to molly, we fucked in her bed. She kept me a secret until her cousin walked in on us fucking a whole year later. I felt discarded, I felt like an option, it was painful, on Christmas she introduced me to her mom as a friend.

I met her in New York City, she liked me. She took me to hole-in-the-wall restaurants with delicious food, she took me rock climbing. She showed me the city by foot, by bike, showed me what it looks like to be a queer parent. She fisted me in her friend’s bed and I squirted all over their mattress. She fucked me in her room, with her gay baby daddy sleeping next door (queer families have the best dynamics). She took me to a nude beach, she told me she loved me, I said it back, we sometimes still video call one another.

I met them at work, they came to a party at my house and spent the night. When we cuddled, I pushed my ass into their thigh, they held me tightly. We spent the following afternoon making out and eating quiche with salad. They told me we cannot catch feelings; I said okay. Two months later they gave me a ring, I took it and wore it when we went out together. They cooked delicious food, we struggled with our polyamory, we taught each other how to communicate better. They taught me to be more accountable, I taught them how to better express what they needed from me. We practised tenderness, we practised compassion and patience. They were beautiful, patient and made me feel loved and respected. I would like to think I made them feel the same way. They nursed me through a tumultuous time and even though my love is not perfect, I loved them.

Sex with another does not mean our souls are tied, or that we will remember each other fondly, but I have been blessed with mostly beautiful sexual experiences over the course of my three decades on this Earth. I have allowed my body to transcend what has previously been written about bodies like mine: fat people are not attractive, fat people don’t have sex drives, femmes should be modest and not claim their sexuality, we should never make the first move. These experiences, and those I omitted, fold into my sexual endeavours like perfectly whipped cream and here I have served the creamiest parts of myself to you.

Kim Windvogel loves semi-nude posting, shit-talking and authentic living. Surprisingly shy, but they will talk your ear off once they trust you. Compiler of They Called Me Queer (2019), host of Sunday Sex Service (2020). Follow them on Instagram @blazingnonbinary.

Femmes wanna fuck too

Jamil F. Khan

TW: Rape

I can’t even remember what we were arguing about, but the air was laden with regret. The tension that tethered us from the bedroom to the lounge made it hard to keep pretending that we were ignoring each other. We never could see each other naked without something moving in us and the late morning sun made it just perfect to stay that way. I’m sure it was nothing serious, but addressing it seemed futile. I just wanted to fuck. If only he could see me lying there, wanting it. I’d rather he read my mind because asking for it is just not what I do. What the? I’m 30 years old – surely, I can participate in my own pleasure by now? Asking for pleasure is a foreign concept to me because I’ve always been the ‘girl’ in the relationship. Per society, girls aren’t sexual and don’t demand much for themselves – we are there to serve. I am 30 fucking